The premiere of Ryan Murphy’s Pose on FX earlier this month was a rare, game-changing moment in television history. The show, a glittering musical drama about the contrasting worlds of New York City ball culture and Trumpian greed in the 1980s, has the largest cast of transgender actors to have graced our screens in a scripted show. There’s plenty of voguing, of course, as well as the high production dance numbers and costumes we've come to expect from Murphy, whose previous projects include Glee and American Horror Story, but the show is also a classic New York story of aspiration, class, and subculture set in the shadow of the AIDS crisis.

In celebration of Pride month, Condé Nast Traveler sat down with activist, actress, and devout Buddhist Angelica Ross, who stars in Pose alongside Janet Mock as the quick-witted, no-nonsense Candy Abundance, to talk about getting to know New York through the lens of the show, traveling as a trans woman of color, and the one trip that changed her life.

You only recently moved to New York from L.A. What was it like to getting to know the city through filming the show?

It was such an interesting way to see the city. When I’m not filming Pose, I’m obviously in modern day New York, and then when we’re filming I jump back to the 1980s. I think of shows like Sex and the City, where New York was basically a main character, and I feel the same about Pose. Only in New York, in that time, could these elements come together to tell the story that we’re telling. It’s almost like Downton Abbey: You’ve got the people who live upstairs and downstairs, or, in this case, uptown and downtown. You have the ball community’s desire to be in mainstream society (and you see just how out of reach that looks), and then the richness, opulence, wealth, and greed of the Trump era. The show leads to a conversation around privilege and class, about who deserves to have their dreams come true and who doesn’t.

It’s such a New York story.

Yeah! And it’s interesting that, while the show is set in the '80s, a lot of it is similar to my story coming up in the '90s. The struggles that my character Candy struggles with are the ones I personally had. And some of the conversations that we’re having [now and in Pose] show that as much time has moved forward, we haven’t as much. But I’ve never felt more capable of making change than I do now. I feel almost like a lion that’s been woken up.

From what I gather, you’ve always been a traveler?

My mom would always say to me “settle down somewhere,” because I was always moving. I’ve lived in New York, Los Angeles, and South Florida. When I was in the military, I was stationed in Japan. That part of my story, my journey, put a scent of Buddhism in my nose. I’d love to able to return to Japan, on my own terms, now in my true identity. I also know I need to break my fears and challenge my own self by traveling, but traveling while trans—traveling while black and trans—is a whole other experience. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m safe in certain parts of the world, and that’s unfortunate.

Ross on a 2015 trip to Hawaii.

Courtesy Angelica Ross

For the LGBTQ+ community, and especially for trans people, safety can be a real concern when choosing where to travel. How do we encourage people to keep visiting new places and experiencing the world while still staying safe?

I have to give advice that I also need to follow myself. I’m a free spirit and I travel alone a lot, but I’m recognizing more and more that it’s not always a safe thing to do. I’m aware that I still have to be careful. Finding friends or other people who have visited or lived in certain areas [of the world], or even connecting to LGBTQ+ communities at events and community spaces to see what life is like for them, is a great thing to do. Plus, why would I not want to have a night or two indulging within my community in a foreign place? I think that's wonderful.

I’m also trying to find a way to foster the free spirit that says “you shouldn’t be afraid to step outside your house; you shouldn’t be afraid to see the world.” It’s just that for folks like us, we have to see the world while also seeing it for its current condition—and making adjustments. I do feel the pulse of humanity trying to move forward, though. You see [this energy] in different parts of the U.S.; places that are starting to get stronger about protecting and standing up for our communities.

How much has travel fueled your activism?

I’ve received letters from people [around the world] about how bad things are, but I’ve also received letters from people about how, despite the odds, they’re creating community, they are striving and thriving. It’s really inspiring to me. I’ve been traveling all my life, from Wisconsin to Japan, but in the beginning I was running away from myself. The way I travel now marks a new chapter. I recognize how far we’ve come, and [try to be] a global citizen when I’m traveling.

Has there been a single moment or experience during your travels that felt transformative?

My good friend Janet Mock invited me to her wedding on an island in Hawaii, so I took the opportunity to extend the trip because I hadn’t taken a vacation in a super long time. The island changed me. I experienced a freedom that week that I will never forget: Not only did the weather and the sun and the mountains and the water embrace me, but so did the men, so did the culture. This one guy took me around the island on the back of his moped, and I was able to see Hawaii with someone who knew the place. I felt free. Until then, there weren’t many times when I was not thinking about my trans-ness and what other people thought of me.

I also realized that nature—the mountains—restored me in some way, and when I got back to L.A. [where I was living at the time] I needed to take this feeling with me. I realized I didn’t have to travel so far to find that sort of peace and refuge—that I can find it where I am, if I’m willing to see the beauty of my home.

With that in mind, why will you never stop traveling?

It’s the only way that we’re all going to connect. We have to be willing to leave our comfort zones to try and understand how other people see the world, and how other people are living. It was a struggle for me to get my documents to match my identity, but it didn’t stop me from traveling. No wall, no barrier, and no border should make people afraid to travel and get to know each other.